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Peace activist raises awareness of drones

By Saerom Yoo;
9:02 p.m. PST January 26, 2014

Leah Bolger of Corvallis was the first woman elected president of Veterans for Peace in 2012, after she retired from 20 years of Navy service.(Photo: Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal, Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal)

A peace activist and retired Navy commander told a Salem group Sunday that America’s secretive combat drone program is illegally killing innocent people, mentally torturing survivors and is negatively changing the way people live.

Leah Bolger, of Corvallis, gave her speech at the monthly Salem Fellowship of Reconciliation meeting. She visited an area of Pakistan she said experiences frequent drone strikes and spoke with victims and survivors.

What she found was that besides the thousands of people killed and properties damaged in drone strikes, the impact of the attacks infiltrated other aspects of life in Waziristan, a region along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While publicly, these strikes are said to kill “bad guys” ambiguously described as “militants” or “terrorists,” Bolger said, the targets are often ordinary young men. Hundreds of children have been killed, she said.

Bolger also found that communities are no longer holding large, festive wedding parties. Families are keeping children home, rather than sending them to school. Some families are sending their kids away to a safer place.

People are reluctant to assemble in large groups. The buzzing noise and the sight of drones circling the sky are a form of psychological torture, Bolger said.

In the end, however, the goal should be to end war altogether, Bolger said, rather than trying to stop drone strikes or prevent the next international conflict.